122 ◾ Accelerating Health Care Transformation
andon boards give real- time situational awareness to a team of clinicians in, say, a
critical care unit, about the status of the care of each and every patient, based on
evidence and recognized guidelines. For example, if the guideline says that a patient
should be on a certain medication and there is no order for it in the medical record,
a box in a grid for that patient glows red on a screen for all care team members to see
until either the order is placed, or a note documenting a clinically valid exception is
written. is is quite different from the practice of retrospective chart reviews and
subsequent feedback to clinicians that most other healthcare organizations use in
trying to achie